Night of the Groomsmen is a story I created from a poster I developed as a gift for the Groomsmen at my wedding.

I immediately fell in love with a story that involved my friends and family in a fight for their lives against the zombie apocalypse. I started writing the story and I quickly realized there was an over saturation of zombies in the marketplace. They're everywhere! So I changed zombies to flesh mutating aliens. It would keep my story in the same vein of a zombie apocalypse but add a different spin to the equation. Hopefully enough to spark interest at a publishing company.

I'll admit, this story was really for my friends and I to laugh about. If it ever got picked up by a publisher that was a bonus. That was my first mistake in the pitch process. I was writing for my friends and not for the publisher. It was fun for me but limits the sales potential and profitability. Who wants to read a story about me and my friends besides my mom? My second mistake was the pitch itself. You can read it below. I tried to make it a joke and not a solid sales pitch.

You'll understand the story from the pitch but there's not a real sense of where the story's going. There's a question but no solution. In addition to a poor pitch, I drew the first 5 pages of my story. They (the pages) weren't the most exciting, nor did it show the majority of the main characters. Sure, I make an appearance but the Groomsmen do not. It's important to show the best pages of the story not the first. My mistake was a very rookie mistake. Now on to those pages.

I must say that I do enjoy the pages and I hope you do too. I was fortunate to work with two amazing people while developing the pages. The amazing color was created by Jean-Francois Beaulieu AKA: Johnnyblue. You may know him as the colorist on the OZ books for Marvel Comics. You can see his work here. He was a joy to work with and a very talented individual. The second person I worked with while developing the pages is my good friend, Matt Santorelli. Matt and I met while I was working for Feld Entertainment and quickly became friends due to our nerddom. You can see his amazing inks here. Matt originally inked the pages for me. He did a great job but I felt like my style of drawing wasn't complete in a way, so I developed it further and decided to ink it myself.

Here are some of Matt's inks. You can see the cool style he brought to the art.

Last but not least, here is some pages I drew while developing the style of the book. :I really enjoy these too but ultimately felt it didn't fit the story I wanted to tell.

I hope you enjoyed a look behind the curtain at the success and pitfalls of my first pitch. If you were wondering, after waiting six months for a reply from Image Comics I decided it's probably a bust. I may rework it and submit it elsewhere down the line if I ever get time. If you have an questions or comments please feel free to contact me anytime.